French A students have been studying the names for members of the family along with learning how to describe age and hair/eye color. Today they listened to a description of an imaginary family and were asked to draw what they heard. Afterwards, we all took turns describing parts of our pictures and one student drew the family on the board as we worked together to recreate orally what we had heard and drawn individually. It was fun to see the different, yet accurate, interpretations of the same description!

French B students work in pairs or teams of 3 this week to write a description of a monster using body parts and a variety of adjectives. We then traded the descriptions with another team who had to draw the monster from the description given. Finally, we gave the monster and description to a third team who was responsible for labeling the monster drawing in French. Students practiced writing and reading comprehension at their level with this activity and had fun imagining and creating the monsters.

French B students practiced our new vocabulary for Body Parts and also reviewed vocabulary for clothing and adjective agreement by creating some new classmates today. After consulting the rubric, students traced a partner’s body with a marker, printed out some faces to attach, and then decorated and labeled 20 body parts, 8 items of clothing, described by colors. Here are some photos as they work.

French C Honors students reviewed vocabulary about travel with two games: “Sur la tête” and “Noodle”. In the first game, students compete to circle a specific vocab word. They have to keep their marker on their head before that word is called.

Noodle

A great game for the gym or a few minutes outside! Each student is provided with a large flashcard picture of a vocabulary word. They then form a circle, holding their cards in front of them so all can see. One player is given a pool noodle and goes in the middle of the circle. They call out one of the vocabulary words being held by the other students. They then must count to 3…1 Mississippi…2… before trying to tap the student holding that particular card with their pool noodle (you have to make rules about how hard you can hit and where, of course). Meanwhile, the student whose vocab word was just called cannot move their feet and must call out someone else’s vocab word before being hit with the pool noodle. If they are successful, the student in the center has to change course and look for the person holding this new vocab word (and now this player must yell out yet another vocab word before begin hit by the noodle). When hit by the noodle, you are “it”. Students should exchange vocab words from time to time.

French B students rotated through 4 different 10 minute stations today as we reviewed for tomorrow’s Unit test. The four stations included practice of questions and answers that will be tested orally, a chance to correct the review sheets from homework with a key, a game of Va pêcher (Go Fish) and a game of Navire de Guerre (Battleship), both focused on vocabulary.

Both French A and B worked on creating books with a partner last week. French A wrote stories about going to school, practicing the verb ALLER along with many other verbs we have learned this year, subjects to study at school, and times of day. French B based their book on a popular children’s book called “No, David!”. They wrote original French commands for the pictures in the book and also drew some of their own pictures. Here is a small sample of their work.

French B met at the end of the day today. We reviewed vocabulary about table settings with a game of Qui est-ce? and then a puzzle competition before today’s quiz. We all were inspired to take the quiz with a sweet prize for winning the game or successfully completing the puzzle!

(Each student was given an object for the table and then I secretly wrote down the name of one student and selected another random student to begin. The student tried to guess the name of the student I wrote by saying the French word for the object that student had. If they correctly guessed, they won that round. )